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NH Man Arrested For Videotaping Police.. Again
OhPlz writes "Back in 2006, a resident of New Hampshire's second largest city was arrested while at the police station attempting to file a complaint against officers. His crime? He had video tape evidence of the officers' wrongdoings. According to the police, that's wiretapping. After world wide attention, the police dropped the charges. His complaint was found to be valid, but the evidence never saw the light of day. Well, guess what? Round two. There are differing reports, but again the police arrested Mr. Gannon and again, they seized his video camera. This time it's 'falsifying evidence' because he tried to hand off the camera, most likely to protect its contents. If there's the potential of police wrongdoing, how is it that the law permits the police to seize the evidence?"
... I reckon "die" is all that's left.
Dog is my co-pilot.
It's quite obvious. Cops are here to serve and protect, themselves, above all else. You don't take videotaped evidence of police wrongdoing to the police, that's the last thing you do. You think there would have been riots in LA had there not been a helicopter overhead filming police beating the shit out of Rodney King? Dashcam footage of that beating would have never seen the light of day. First thing you do when you have video evidence of police wrongdoing, you upload it to the internet. Plain and simple.
No, we're moving toward awareness of the police state we are already living in.
Once when I was 16 and a huge smartass, I yelled, "I smell bacon!" out the window of a car I was a passenger in. There was a cop on the side of the road that had someone pulled over. I see him drop everything, run back to his car and get back into it. I thought there was no way he would ever catch us, and anyway I thought yelling out the window was not illegal. He didn't try to catch us - instead he radioed ahead to someone else who pulled us over within a few minutes. The cop comes up to the car, says, "Which one of you yelled, 'I'm going to kill you fucking cops'"? We played it off like it was the radio and said nobody yelled that out the window. Anyway, they took all our names, made us get out of the car, the whole nine yards. For yelling, "I smell bacon" at a cop. I guess we were luck we didn't get beat up, tazed, maced and put in jail like this guy.
I'm a big tall mofo.
If people, especially authorities can't be recorded when in public, then there is nothing to prevent them from abusing their authority, doing anything they wish, and lying about it. I most places around the US, the police video tape the public every time they stop a vehicle. The public has the same right, no matter what laws they try to create or enforce to prevent you from taping them. When they're in public, you have the right to record their actions. If not, then you're already living in a police state.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
We need a "National Record the Police in Public Day". I think that a public event like this would enforce the point far more strongly that the police losing an occasional lawsuit.
"Gannon was charged with resisting arrest, simple assault on a police officer and disorderly conduct."
The original charge seems to be disorderly conduct. Whatever he shouted at the police while they were driving by, plus whatever he said prior to being tackled is probably what the disorderly conduct was about.
If you ask me, they probably would have arrested him for saying "Booo!"
Yes a suprisingly large amount of the populations belives that if a police officer says you are guilty then you must be.
Unfortunately a surprisingly large amount of (all) judges believe the same.
"If you enter a plea of 'guilty' or 'no contest' then I will look over the sworn statements by both you and the arresting officer. In which case, I will assume the written report by the officer is true and you will be found guilty. If you enter a plea of 'not guilty,' then a meeting with the prosecutor will be arranged for a later date. You will then, at another later date, go to trial with a jury of your peers. If you cannot afford legal representation then you may apply for a court appointed attorney by submitting an application along with a $25 charge for processing the application."
Basically, 'guilty' and 'no contest' are synonymous in the eyes of the judge. The only way for police testimony to come into question is for a jury to rule against it or for a lawyer to prove it's tainted in some way. So say you're being charged with something relatively minor and the penalty is like $100 + court costs. Of course, whether you're guilty or not, it would make sense to plea 'no contest' and take the punishment b/c the damn lawyer will suck more than that out of you. Not to mention the time it takes to go through the various processes.
Sadly, many police/court systems are nothing but legalized extortion. Justice is an afterthought.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Also consider the following regarding "traffic stops" and "minor tickets":
If you show up to "just pay it" or "take defensive driving", they give you a "break" and it costs you around $150-200 after court costs.
If you want to plead not guilty, then you have to burn:
- The cost of your lawyer.
- At least one half-day (if not a full one) of leave from work to show up and plead not guilty.
- At least one half-day, if not full day, to "meet with the prosecutor."
- A large amount of time subpoenaing whatever you need to subpoena, taking your own measurements of the area, photographing. And half the time the corrupt police won't deliver the things requested as evidence (like the officer's dashcam record, radar gun calibration records, etc) and you'll have to fight for those, which means you have to show up in court and burn MORE leave time to get the judge to issue the subpoena for discovery.
- At least one half-day, if not full day, to actually be in court and empanel the jury.
- At least one half-day, if not full day or even more, to be in court to actually argue your case.
And at the end of it, you have to be prepared for the possibility that if you're found guilty, the corrupt judge is going to throw the book at you and the Prosecutor is going to tack on a bunch of miscellaneous bullshit charges, whatever they can come up with, to punish you for "wasting our time" by actually asserting your constitutional right to plead innocent and have a trial by jury.
The whole system is rigged. Cops know it; they're the corrupt underpinning of it.
During voir dire I was asked, "Do you think a policeman might lie?" I told the obvious truth and was dismissed from jury duty. I guess they figured that selecting the ignorant helps the rigging process.
Everything and its opposite is true. Get used to it.
WTF?
the guy is arrested for TRESSPASSING, "the owners want you gone, if you don't go, that's trespassing, if you haven't done anything wrong talk to the owners or call a lawyer after you have left the premises." could avoid the scuffle that you so clearly enjoyed.
instead you antagonized the situation by downplaying the legal rights of the owner and up-playing your authority.
I've seen thousands charged with resisting arrest in my country, and more often than not, the courts dismiss the charges.
People don't and won't ever like to involuntarily give up their own safety and ability to protect themselves and put complete trust into an absolute stranger who (as been proven) have almost 0 recourse for unlawful action unless caught on tape. It's reasonable to expect that a reasonable person may fight this on a purely instinctual level.
If you really want people to understand, listen, and take you seriously about grievances you have with your local police, you need to back off of the political garbage and treat the problem for what it really is, cops that lie and cheat.
When one political party is a group of people who in the past few years have been strongly associated with Stormfront-level racism and thuggery, the political party seems to have more to do with it than you are willing to allow.
Looking at the rhetoric coming from the Republicans and the Tea Party in areas like Arizona, Texas, New Mexico, the secessionist nutwad fringe from California, and even in northern states like Wisconsin and Ohio, it's not hard to understand why the OP would consider the primary problem to be the association of so-called "law enforcement" with the Republican Party, especially if OP happens to be of one of the demographic or racial groups that the Republicans/Tea Party have been targeting recently.
Also, consider the cases we've had in political and police corruption in the past. Civil Rights legislation and investigations - some of cases going back 60 years or more - go on because the police were all in the same political party, were all members of the KKK, and were all complicit in that sort of behavior in the South. The fact that OP's home county is dominated by the one political party is not to be discounted in the ability for said party to be corrupt, through and through.
Of course, I'm assuming that OP lives in the South. But it's not a bad assumption. They're well-known for the whistle-stop sort of towns with cops who do crap like went on in Tenaha, TX, another Republican stronghold.
No, we are 100% IN a police state right now.
The final brick in that particular wall was the aftermath of 9/11, when the nation as a whole suddenly became obsessed with safety.
Being helpful is stupid.
Yes, it is.
Don't Talk to Cops, Part 1 (in which a lawyer tells you why you should never talk to the cops)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8z7NC5sgik
Don't Talk to Cops, Part 2 (in which a cop agrees with the lawyer)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=08fZQWjDVKE
Completely wrong. The problem is that police officers have shown time and again that they are NOT ethical. Keep in mind that a cop is ALWAYS gathering evidence. Sure you know you didn't do anything, but you were nearby. Now you're a suspect. Wait, you were by yourself, so now no alibi. The cop will then of course make stuff up like you looked nervous or seemed anxious. Suddenly you're a prime suspect. At this point all it takes is an eye witness (people see things incorrectly all the time, police can pressure someone to talk) which carry way more weight in court than they should and you're going to jail.
You may think this sounds crazy, but just look at people finally being proven innocent by DNA years later. Turns out the cops and prosecutors got a bead on them and simply make stuff up to make the case work. Don't think police make stuff up? Read this.
A friend of mine is a lawyer. His advice, never speak to the police without your lawyer present. First, he can obviously advise you and second the cop can't later lie in court about what was said.
I run a youth program. We have HD security cameras covering all of our premises (not the bathrooms). We have caught police misconduct more than once with those cameras.
Back in May we had a police officer from the next town over come in to "talk" with one of our teens about a crime that "they may have witnessed". When I got this call, my next call was to 911 to put on record that this was going to go on (standard policy for us, any time a police officer calls to interview a kid in our program, a staff member calls 911 to put it on the record. We find this stops a lot of police abuses, along with our ready access to lawyers). When the police officers came, the two of them tried to strong arm the kid out the door. We flatly refused to allow the teen to be taken to the police station to be questioned, and told the police officers that they would need to arrest the teen and read them their rights before we would allow them to leave (and that the teen was then invoking the right to a lawyer). They were not happy - they even accused me of not 'playing ball'.
When they started shoving the teen and talking about how the teen had just hit the officer (to be clear, the teen never touched the cop, the cops flatly made it up), and that was grounds for arrest, I physically stepped between the cops and the teen (I am 6'1, 220, a third degree black belt in Tie Kwan Do and like to lift weights) and informed them that the interview was over, and they were to leave. My volunteer assistant (who works part time as a judge at the state Department of Education!) called 911 at that point - calling 911 also activates the audio recording of all of our cameras, as well as an auto backup of our cameras to the law office next door.
Long story short, it was a weird stand off until local police arrived - the two cops having their hands on their guns, my telling them they had to leave or be escorted out. When local police arrived (with whom we have a generally good relationship) we informed them that our security cameras had caught the whole thing and we wanted the two cops arrested for assault. The first thing the local cops wanted to do was take the recording device and arrest the teen. When I said that it was no problem, our system recorded to three redundant devices, one of which is at our lawyers office, suddenly they didn't want to take the teen, and couldn't get out of their fast enough.
We sent a copy of the video to the DA's office, asking for an investigation, another copy went to the lawyer we set the family up with to represent this kid, and a third to the police department of the next town, with a letter from our lawyer stating that we would not allow any officer from their department to enter our premises or interview any of our kids without the programs lawyer present.